GoFlex Net & GoFlex Home

[WSJ]

I transfered 350 movie files to the GoFlex drive and they all show up on my desktop and laptop computers. But when I try to access movie files on my Samsung Smart TV or my PS3 and also Android cell phone  I only see about 40 movie files. The files have been on the flex drive for 13 days now so that should be plenty of time to stream to the devices by now if that was the problem. Has anyone had this problem and if so did you find a solution.

[kenji57]

If the movie files show up on your computers then the problem is with the players (Smart TV, PS3 and Android phone).

The GFH minidlna media server does not transcode, so if the player can't handle the file type it won't show up in the list. In other words the player device doesn't recognize it as a media file.

For the Smart TV and PS3 there is probably not much you can do except convert your movie files to another format or codec.

For the Android device, what are you using as a player. I use MediaHouse-Pro to browse my movies via dlna and MX player, (although that is on my tablet, I haven't tried watching movies on my phone for a long time).

I just checked in Google play and MX player is also compatible with my phone.

[ATL740]

WSJ, I have to agree with you.  I am a very knowledgable user (network, servers, linux, windows, etc) and for the last 7 days I have faught with trying to use this GOFLEX as a media server either with its native sharing application, as a source for WMP Shared Media or as a folder for P3MS (PS3 Media Server).  In all cases it has proven to be completely incapable of providing that functionality.  I have about 25,000 music files, 35,000 pictures and over 300 Movies in varios formats.  The device dlna database transfer to otehr devices is terriblly slow.  It would make about half of the songs, half of the photos and 3 of the movie folders show up on either the PS3, remote WMP my smart TV.  

I purposefully picked up the GOFLEX due to the large capacity, but I only used about 900GB and it was unable to perform.

I moved all the media back to my local computer and all of the above mentioned media devices once again began working properly, all photos, music and movies were available for use.  

I will be using this GOFLEX from now on as nothing more than a backup device and will move back to a traditional PC with USB3 hard drive attached and shared via WMP or P3MS.

I am very dissappointed that I wasted about 60 hours in the last 7 days trying to make this thing work properly.

[kenji57]

Hi ATL740, 

I agree that the Goflex Home may not be the best media server around and was also critical and disappointed initially.

I had some problems with dlna and found this post very helpful GFH media server SSH configuration so it may be worth persevering. With your experience you'd find it very simple.

I also have a GoflexTV and Kaiser Baas wifi media player that can act as a NAS with USB connected storage and a Netgear router with ReadyShare and dlna streaming, but now that I have sorted out the problems I'm fairly happy with the GFH.

To be fair, some of the problems are with the other devices - PS3 won't even read NTFSand refuses to play some media files that play fine on other devices.

[ATL740]

kenji57,

Thanks for the response.  I did see that post and found several others that took me down the path of unmounting, rebuilding the minidlna database.  I have rooted around in the bowels of this device "hoping" it would be the solution I have been looking for.  I guess like Cheif Justice Roberts, I was trying to find a way to force it to work even when it was wrong  Sorry about that shameless plug...

It really seems that the minidlna process on this box has a hard time with multiple level directory structures and large folder counts/file counts.

To your point about the other other devices, I have to say, the media I moved to the GFH is the same size I had running under WMP (and sometimes my P3MS) and I never had an issue with media not showing as available. (my primary computer in the condo what hosted all my media previsouly was NTFS internal adn 3 external NTFS drives that WMP and P3PM stream to the PS3 without issue.   I moved to the GFH to gain the extra space since I was running out of traditional space and didn't want to have my PC on all the time in order to stream around the condo.

I may try once more to rebuild the dlna db and see if it will work again, 17th time is a charm, right?

I will post an update.  This is last try before I go tomorrow and build a full media server...from scratch.

[kenji57]

Yes, windows media player will transcode whereas minidlna streams the file in the original format, so WMP and many other media servers are way better than minidlna but they have a full OS and hardware to support them.

And yes, minidlna is slow rebuilding its' database and sometimes needs a bit of a push to start and help when it falls over.

This link may be of use to you, http://www.openstora.com/wiki/index.php?title=MiniDLNA_for_Stora .

Down at the bottom of the page there are a few comments about working with PS3 and Sony TV's

[WSJ]

The PS3 my smart tv and android phone had no problem reading the movie file when i was streaming from my computer. My question is why the GFH stop streamimng files to my devices at 40 movie files. I can still go back to my shared movies files from the computer on all the prementioned devices and all the files are there.

[kenji57]

Windows media player transcodes the files as it streams them, so that might explain why the files play on the other devices.

I'm still not clear on your problem. Your original post gave the impression that the GFH is streaming OK to the computer but not to the PS3 and smart TV.

If you browse the GFH in Windows Media Player on your computer, are you also only seeing 40 movies?

If that is the case, then have a look at  this post or maybe this one

There is a problem with minidlna application that if it comes across a file it doesn't like when it is buidling its database then it just stops instead of skipping the file. You need to find the problem file and remove it (you can try converting it and putting them back). 

[WSJ]

As stated in previous post I can see all the files on the computer from the GFH, but only see 40 files on PS3 and Smart TV. I can even see the files from remote viewing when I am not at home, even though they will not play because they are not flash enable files, but I can see all 350 files. I am going to check the next file after where it stops on my devices and remove that file from GFH and see if that solves problem, I will update.

[kenji57]

Your previous posts weren't clear at all but I have worked out what you were trying to say.

Yes, the files are all on the Goflex home and you can see them in file explorer but the media server is only streaming the first 40 because one or more are stopping the media server from building its database and you need to remove the problem file(s).

Good luck, all the info you need is in my previous post - no need to update.